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Adrien Le Corbeau, The Forest Giant

Foreword by Jeremy
Wilson to the French and English parallel text
published by Castle Hill
Press

T.E. Lawrence once wrote that in the distant future he expected to be
remembered if at all as a man of letters rather than a man of
action.1

Of
his two surviving translations, one needs no introduction: The
Odyssey of Homer quickly became a classic and is still in print,
nearly seventy years after it first appeared. It has often attracted
scholarly comment.

By
contrast, virtually nothing has been written in English about his
translation of Le Gigantesque, first printed in small English
and American editions in 1924 and reprinted just once, soon after
his death in 1935. Neither edition sold more than a few hundred
copies.

Although Lawrence sometimes belittled his translating in letters to
literary friends, we know from his correspondence about the
Odyssey that he took immense pains over it.2 He saw
himself as a literary craftsman, and translating gave him the
opportunity to practise this craft in one of its purest forms. For
it is no minor undertaking to search out the subtleties of another
author's meaning in a foreign language, and then to express them -
as well or better - in one's own.

In
this task, Lawrence started out with an advantage, because his grasp
of French had deep roots. He had first learned it while living in
Dinard as a child, and had kept this native understanding alive in
his youth through holidays in France and reading French literature.
Enjoyment of the latter did not stop when he left university. In
June 1911, for example, he wrote home from Carchemish that he was
reading a French edition of Rabelais every night, 'a most profound
comfort'.3 He used French during the war and afterwards
at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

It
is surprising that (to the best of my knowledge) there has been no
critical examination of The Forest Giant as a translation -
by an English-speaking scholar. One reason may be that copies of
Le Gigantesque are hard to find. Although the Acadmie Franaise
awarded it the Montyon prize, the novel failed to bring Le Corbeau
the literary recognition he so much hoped for.

The
parallel edition of the French and English texts will
allow readers familiar with French to see that Lawrence's Forest
Giant is a skilful re-creation of the work, rather than a
straightforward translation. In my judgement his version is
significantly better than the French original. It deserves to rank
among Lawrence's literary achievements.

History of the translation

In January 1923 Lawrence lost his place in the ranks of the RAF. He
decided not to publish either the abridgement of Seven Pillars
that he had prepared with Edward Garnett, or the complete text in
its 1922 version. Shortly afterwards he re-enlisted, this time in
the Tank Corps, and was posted to Bovington Camp in Dorset. There,
for the first time since his childhood years at Langley Lodge on the
border of the New Forest, he found himself surrounded by countryside
- some of the most beautiful in England.

He
was also in a deeply introspective mood, as is shown by the sequence
of letters that he wrote to Lionel Curtis between March and June
1923.4 In one of these, on 30 May, he wrote: 'The perfect
beauty of this place becomes tremendous, by its contrast with the
life we lead, and the squalid huts we live in, and the noisy
bullying authority of all our daily unloveliness. The nearly
intolerable meanness of man is set in a circle of quiet heath, and
budding trees, with the firm level bar of Purbeck beyond. The two
worlds shout their difference in my ears. Then there is the
irresponsibility: . . . There has not been presented to me, since I
have been here, a single choice: everything is ordained . . .
perhaps in determinism complete there lies the perfect peace I have
so longed for.'5

For
the moment, his career as a writer had stalled. Seven Pillars
was in abeyance, while dismissal from the RAF had halted his other
book-project (eventually completed, though to a different plan, as
The Mint). Soon after arriving at Bovington he wrote to
Jonathan Cape: 'If you, as a publisher, ever have anything in French
which needs translating (for a fee!) please give me a chance at it.
I've plenty [of] leisure in the Army, and my French is good, and
turning it into English is a pleasure to me: also the cash would be
welcome, however little it was.'6 Cape's reply was
encouraging, and Lawrence wrote again a few days later: 'it would be
nice to play with words again. Squad drill is a little heavy on the
mind.'7

Cape's first suggestion was a truly daunting project: the French
text by J. C. Mardrus of The Arabian Nights. Despite its
length, Lawrence was enthusiastic: 'I'd like to do it very well...
into as good English as we moderns can write . . . I'll be eager to
hear how the idea grows with you.'8 Cape began
investigating whether the English rights to Mardrus were available
(he later found they were not). In the meantime, he sent Lawrence
Le Gigantesque, which had been published in Paris the previous
year. Lawrence replied on 12 June: 'I've read The Gigantesque
- and it seems to me quite a good book - likely to interest the
better class of your public: though the thinking in it is too
frequent for the crowd. I'll translate it with pleasure: and have
done a couple of chapters already.'9 He may have been
attracted by Le Corbeau's central theme, of determinism in human
life as in nature.

Despite his initial confidence, Lawrence soon found the task more
difficult than he had expected. On 8 July he wrote: 'This is how
Le Gigantesque stands. I started gaily: did about 20 pages into
direct swinging English then turned back and read it, and it was
horrible. The bones of the poor thing showed through.

'So
I cancelled that, and did it again more floridly. The book is
written very commonplacely, by a man of good imagination and a bad
mind and unobservant. Consequently it's banal in style and ordinary
in thought, and very interesting in topic.

'I've dressed up about a third of it in grand-sounding prose to hide
its hollowness. And am not pleased with it.

'What hurry are you in? I'll finish translating it in about ten days
- and would like then to set it aside for a week and then paraphrase
the whole thing again from end to end. This I suppose is an
impossible proceeding from your point of view, as an honest
publisher: but it would be best artistically.

'Sorry for making a mess of it: but it's infuriating to find
second-class metaphysics, and slip-shod writing, on so
extraordinarily good a theme. I'd like to wring Le Corbeau's neck.'10

It
was five weeks before Lawrence wrote to Cape again, this time with
typical self-deprecation: 'Here at last is the first half of Le
Gigantesque: it's been written over twice, and I still feel it
very deficient, both as English and as a work of fiction. However I
also feel that it's better than the French. If the man had had a
grain of humour.

'Will you let me see it once more, if it gets into type or print?

'The revise of the second half is half-way. I'm very sorry for the
slowness, but I've worked at it a little more than I expected: and
have been passing army exams and getting fever in-between. . . .

'I'd call this The Forest Giant or something of that sort.
Better than The Biggest Tree or The Giant.'11

He
wrote again a few days later, promising the second half that week:
'It has been stiff to do: not because the French was hard, but
because the style was banal. I have four chapters yet to re-write.'12

It
was 13 September before he sent them: 'At last this foul work:
complete. Please have [it] typed and send [it] down that I may get
it off my suffering chest before I burst. Damn Adrien le Corbeau and
his rhetoric. The book is a magnificent idea, ruined by jejune
bombast. My version is better than his: but dishonest here and
there: but my stomach turned. Couldn't help it.'13

Cape was impressed; but the more he praised the translation, the
more Lawrence protested: 'no, I don't feel proud of Le
Gigantesque or that I have done any special good thereby. A
fellow with another standard in English might have done differently.
So no more pay than was bargained for. It isn't earned, chez moi,
and you won't make money on the book: for I cannot see the British
Public buying it.'14

When Cape ignored this, Lawrence protested again: 'Your cheque and
letter arrived today. The first is too large, and I'll hold it till
you reconsider. The book is going to cost you money.

'I
have the typescript of the first half (corrected) by me, and am
holding it till the second comes, that I may see how they fit
together. Please send it down that I may see over it and get over
it! These last corrections are very dear to the writer, since they
remove blemishes particularly sharp in his sight.'15

In
the event, this was to be the only translation of a French book that
Lawrence completed. Later that year he abandoned a second novel,
Pierre Custot's Sturly.16 Then in December he
committed himself to a subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars
- a task that would occupy his free time for three years.

The
next book he would translate would be Homer's Odyssey,
published in 1932. Nevertheless, the idea of translation from French
continued to appeal to him. He mentioned it to publishing friends
from time to time. Perhaps the best indication of the pleasure it
gave him is in a letter to Edward Garnett, written a few weeks after
The Forest Giant was finished: 'Do you know that lately I
have been finding my deepest satisfaction in the collocation of
words so ordinary and plain that they cannot mean anything to a
book-jaded mind: and out of some of such I can draw deep stuff. Is
it perhaps that certain sequences of vowels and consonants imply
more than others: that writing of this sort has music in it? I don't
want to affirm it, and yet I would not deny it: for if writing can
have sense (and it has: this letter has) and sound why shouldn't it
have something of pattern too? My sequences seem to be independent
of ear... to impose themselves through the eye alone. I achieved a
good many of them in Le Gigantesque: but fortuitously for the
most part.

'Do
you think that people ever write consciously well? or does that
imply an inordinate love for the material, and so ruin the art. I
don't see that it should.'17

Lawrence's surviving letters suggest that he knew nothing about
Adrien Le Corbeau, the man whose work he was translating, and felt
no curiosity on the subject.

Adrien Le Corbeau was one of several pseudonyms used by Rudolf
Bernhardt, a Romanian-born writer who spent most of his adult life
in Paris. The French capital held a special appeal to Romanian
intellectuals. In the first half of the twentieth century the
expatriate community there included many writers and artists.

Born in 1886, Bernhardt moved to Paris in about 1910, with high
literary ambitions. During the Great War he caught typhus and nearly
died - an experience that informed his second novel L'Heure
Finale.18 In the post-war years he worked in
publishing. He also wrote for Romanian newspapers using the
pseudonym Adrian Corbul. He died of cancer in 1932, in his
mid-forties. The previous year he had published a third novel, Le
Couple Nu.19 As the title suggests, the theme of the
book is erotic; but like The Forest Giant it is filled with
references to the natural world.

16.
Lawrence burned the draft of his translation. Cape then commissioned
a translation from Richard Aldington. Its dust-jacket carried the
blurb Lawrence had written for his own version. This was reprinted
in DG pp.4389.

T. E. Lawrence chronology

1910-14: Magdalen College, Oxford (Senior Demy), while working at the British
Museum's excavations at Carchemish

1915-16: Military Intelligence Dept, Cairo

1916-18: Liaison Officer with the Arab Revolt

1919: Attended the Paris Peace Conference

1919-22: wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1921-2: Adviser on Arab Affairs to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office

1922 August: Enlisted in the Ranks of the RAF

1923 January: discharged from the RAF

1923 March: enlisted in the Tank Corps

1923: translated a French novel, The Forest Giant

1924-6: prepared the subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1927-8: stationed at Karachi, then Miranshah

1927 March: Revolt in the Desert, an abridgement of Seven
Pillars, published

1928: completed The Mint, began translating Homer's Odyssey

1929-33: stationed at Plymouth

1931: started working on RAF boats

1932: his translation of the Odyssey published

1933-5: attached to MAEE, Felixstowe

1935 February: retired from the RAF

1935 19 May: died from injuries received in a motor-cycle crash on 13 May

1935 21 May: buried at Moreton, Dorset

﻿

This T. E. Lawrence Studies website is edited and maintained by
Jeremy Wilson. Its content draws on the research archive
formed through work on Lawrence of Arabia, The Authorised Biography
and the ongoing Castle Hill Press edition of T. E. Lawrence's writings. Expenses
maintaining the site are funded by Castle Hill Press. The site has no connection
with any other organisation.